Grass 1

Research Paper Holocaust Overview

James Grass

Mr. Neuburger Eng Comp 102-118 12 April 2013

Grass 2 Its the 30th of January in the year of 1933 and a man by the name of Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. For the next 11 years, the German people will be fooled into a life of prosperity, and their Jewish neighbors will be systematically hunted, held captive, and possibly murdered. The Holocaust is marked as one of the most terrifying events to ever take place. This event in history is the genocide of more than twelve million Jews including others who opposed the Nazis Regime. It all started when the German people suffered the loss of World War 1 and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. This led to a desperation for wealth and power which fueled the rise of the Nazis and anti-Semitic Adolf Hitler. Nazis rise to power According to A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust, World War I ended in 1918 with casualties totaling around 37 million and leaving 9 million dead. German propaganda failed to prepare the nation for this bitter loss giving Germans a loss sense of national pride. The military and political leaders responsible blamed leftwing politicians, Communists, and Jews. A new government called the Weimar Republic pushed for a democratic system resulting in violent control from extreme political parties. None of these parties could control the depressed economy or the social disorder. Furthermore, after the Treaty of Versailles which left Germany paying the extremely large war debt, a small political party called the German Workers Party gained not only attention from the public but a dedicated and persuasive speaker, Adolf Hitler. Hitler became the leader of the party through his emotional opinions and convincing speeches. He condemned the Jews showing anti-Semitic feelings that had been in Europe for centuries. He changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German Workers' Party or the Nazi Party. By 1921, the party had over 3,000 members and Hitler was elected the party leader.

Grass 3 In 1923, Hitler led an armed attempt to overthrow local authorities in Munich. This event was known as the Beer Hall Putsch and it failed miserably leaving Hitler and other Nazi leaders charged with high treason but Hitler used the trial as a platform to speak against the Weimar Republic. After the 24 day trial, Hitler received support from the public and sympathy from the judges who sentenced him to only 5 years with parole. Hitler only served one year but during that year in prison he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf which led to more public attention and helped him to regain control of the Nazis party. Hitlers book included his prejudice thoughts, and his economic and political platform. Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and became the Nazis ideological base. Between 1925 and 1929, the Nazis rose from 27,000 members to 108,000 members. Most of this was due to the establishment of so many auxiliary units benefitting German women, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and especially young abled German men. Many of these groups were referred to as SA or SS units. Moreover, the Nazi party was unpopular in the Reichstag at first only winning 2.6% of the total vote in the 1928 elections. The following year, The Great Depression struck, bringing worldwide economic, social, and psychological consequences. The Weimar democracy was unable to fix the national despair as unemployment doubled from three million to six million by 1932. Reich president Paul von Hindenburg's advisers persuaded him to use the constitution's emergency presidential powers which would allow the president to restore law and order in a crisis. With the current government collapsing and having a new presidential system
Hitler walking between the Third Reich Source:http://bit.ly/cnuwPE

in place left the door wide open for Hitler. During the 1930

elections, the Nazis won 18.3% making it the second largest party in the Reichstag. Two years

Grass 4 later, the Nazis won 37% of the vote and President Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. In the next six years, Hitler quickly used his power to make Germany a police state and built up its military which was against the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler kept telling Britain and France that his power over Austria and neighboring states was for peace but by 1939 Hitler was ready to invade Poland, starting up World War II (Holocaust Timeline: The Rise of the Nazi Party). Nazis views on Jews It is obvious that through Hitlers deranged ideas on a superior race, Jews suffered the most during the Holocaust. He convinced most of Germany that Jews were evil, unwanted beings that are a curse to Europe. It was Hitlers idea that they would either need to be evacuated or exterminated. This thought was not only condoned by Hitler and his followers but by Christians. According to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Protestant churches were in agreement with the Nazis oppression of Jews. In a book by Christopher Probst called Demonizing the Jews shows that writings by Martin Luther on Judaism were used by most German theologians and clergy. The
Hitler shaking hands with a German priest http://bit.ly/11gez12

writings were made use to support the racial anti-

Semitism already present among Germans and Protestants. Many pastors, bishops, and theologians of different theological and political persuasions used Luthers texts with considerable success of campaigning for the establishment of a de-Judaized form of Christianity. Probst shows that even the church most critical of Luthers anti-Jewish writings reaffirmed the anti-Semitic stereotyping that helped justify early Nazi measures against the Jews (Probst).

Grass 5 Kristallnacht According to University of South Florida, Anti-Semitism became extremely accepted, climaxing during Kristallnacht meaning "Night of Broken Glass. This event took place on November 9, 1938 when Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels initiated a free-forall violence against the Jews. Nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire in which 76 were destroyed and more
Synagogue set on fire during Kristallnacht. http://bit.ly/NrmlB4

than 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were broken into

and looted. Close to a hundred Jews were killed and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps to be anguished, most of them for months. Days after the event, the Nazis forced the Jews to give up their businesses to German hands and they were arrogant enough to persecute the Jews by forcing them to pay for the damages of Kristallnacht. As well, all Jewish children were expelled from public schools during the catastrophe ("Holocaust Timeline: The Nazification of Germany"). Ghettos According to A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust, in October 1941, general deportations began from Germany to major ghettos in Poland and Jews from Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were sent to the ghettos. In total, the Nazis established 356 ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945 (Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos). According to Yad Vashem, when the Jews were sent to the ghettos they could only take a few personal items with them in the process of being stripped of their homes and property. Not only were the ghettos extremely crowded but they often lacked basic electrical and sanitary infrastructure. The food was insufficient for

Grass 6 supporting the ghettos, and the Germans used brutal tactics against the Jews who smuggled food. These tactics often included both public and private executions. Starvation increased in later years of the ghettos and many of the inhabitants died or became very sick. Furthermore, the conditions in the ghettos were poor; many risked their lives for higher values, such as the education of their children, preservation of religious traditions, and fulfillment of cultural activities. These values were usually preserved by communal institutions and voluntary organizations. Intellectual recreations such as music, theater, and writing served as an escape from the harsh
Jews gather in a home at the Warsaw ghetto Source: http://bit.ly/HBpFCf

reality and as a reminder of their lives previously. Artists,

intellectuals, and ordinary individuals, wrote to document the fear and dread that was placed upon the Jewish society. These activities enabled many to rise above the degradation and humiliation the Germans placed on them and despite the reality, many Jews helped the weak and some even founded organizations for mutual aid and welfare. These Jews placed themselves in dangerous positions in order to save the lives of others. Children also risked their lives in order to smuggle food into the ghetto ("The Ghettos: Daily Life in the Ghettos). All ghettos had the most appalling, inhuman living conditions. The smallest ghetto housed approximately 3,000 people. Warsaw, the largest ghetto, held 400,000 people. Ldz, the second largest, held about 160,000 (Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos). The Nazis decided to liquidate the ghettos after "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in 1942. Massive deportations of Jews to concentration and death camps continued until the summer of 1944 but by this time, almost all of the ghettos had been liquidated (Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos). Jewish resistance

Grass 7 When the Nazis began separating, persecuting, and murdering Jews, this sparked a fire in some of them and they retaliated. This was known as the Jewish Resistance. There were different types of resistance including spiritual resistance and armed resistance. According to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the biggest opposition to Nazis policies in Europe was organized armed resistance by Jews and different partisan groups. Over 100 Ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union had outbreaks of armed resistance at some point during the war. Resistance also occurred at three different killing centers including Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Sobibor. In many countries occupied by the Nazis, Jews and others were resistant by sending aid and rescue to Jews in Poland. The most common form of resistance was spiritual by means of preserving Jewish history and communal life or aiding and rescuing Jews in the ghettos and concentration camps. Furthermore, the most notorious uprising during the war happened in the Warsaw ghetto where the Jews there had heard rumors of the Nazis deporting the remaining inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. Most of them gathered with small arms, grenades and Molotov cocktails to attack the Germans. German SS and police officers entered the ghetto in April of 1943 in hope of easily deporting the Jews but instead were brutally attacked by members of
Jewish Resistance fighters Source: http://bit.ly/SjqHJz

the Jewish Fighting Organization and other Jews. The

Jews were out matched and held a good fight for three days but it took the superior German army nearly a month to completely pacify the ghetto. Later in the same year Jews rebelled in many other ghettos including Vilna, Bialystok in Poland (Jewish Resistance.).

Grass 8 According to the USHMM during the August 1943 deportations, the Bialystok ghetto staged an uprising against the Germans. The Jews goal was to break out of the ghetto and join partisans in the nearby forests. Armed Jews attacked German forces near the ghetto fence along Smolna Street and the fighting in the northeastern section of the ghetto lasted for five days. Hundreds of Jews died in the fight including seventy-one Jewish fighters discovered in a bunker and captured by the Germans. More than a hundred Jews were able to escape the ghetto and join partisan groups around the Bialystok area. After the resistance any remaining Jews were deported to Treblinka or killed right there in the ghetto. Exactly a year later in August of 1944, the Soviet Army liberated the city of Bialystok (Bialystok.). According to USHMM Resistance took place in over 100 ghettos in Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. Jews began this resistance in 1942 when the Germans attempted to establish ghettos in a number of small towns in eastern Poland. Revolts happened in Starodubsk, Kletsk, Lachva, Mir, Tuchin, and other towns. When the Germans began to liquidate the larger ghettos in 1943, they met with armed Jewish resistance in Krakow, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Bedzin, Sosnowiec, and Tarnow, as well as the major uprising in Warsaw. Thousands of Jews escaped from the ghettos and joined partisan units in nearby forests but even more Jews died from attempting these escapes (Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans). Armed resistance in the camps was paramount to suicide, but many sacrificed their lives to weaken the Nazis. One Jewish woman, Mala Zimetbaum, stole an SS uniform and secret documents telling of the Nazi slaughter, then escaped from Auschwitz. She was recaptured and sent back to the camp, where she was paraded in front of the prisoners. In front of the whole camp, she suddenly began to slash her wrists with a razor. Don't be afraid, girls, she screamed, their end is near. I

Grass 9 am certain of this, I know. I was free. The Nazis beat her, then burned her alive. Her courage inspired further revolt, such as an uprising in which Jewish women blew up the crematorium furnace at Birkenau. For this triumph, the rebels paid with their lives. To resist was to risk death, but to submit was to lose all that was life. The young, the religious, the righteous, and the courageous kept faith through the Holocaust, and struck out in any way possible against Nazi injustice. Their faith kept them, their people, and their story, alive. (Jewish Resistance ThinkQuest) After hearing about the Warsaw ghetto resistance from the Jews brought to Treblinka from Warsaw, the organizers decided to continue with the plan for a revolt. On August 2, 1943, the underground fighters carried out their plan by stealing arms from the warehouse, killing some guards on duty, setting part of the camp on fire, destroying the extermination area, and finally helping the other prisoners escape to nearby forests. A lot of the fighters were killed during the rebellion including the resistance leaders. Reports of the revolt brought German reinforcements from all directions. As many as 200 prisoners escaped and about twenty of those men survived getting recaptured. A few months after the revolt, the camp was closed, leveled, and covered with pine trees to hide traces of mass murder. In September 1943, the deportation of Soviet Jewish prisoners from Minsk brought a trained Soviet army officer, Lieutenant Alexandr Pechersky to Sobibor. The Jewish underground created by Leon Feldhendler, the son of a rabbi from the nearby town of Zolkiewka, recruited Pechersky and made him commander. Feldhendler created a plan to lure SS officers into storehouses and attack them with axes and knives. The prisoners, now armed, would begin destruction during roll call. Then they would then break open the gate and all prisoners would

Grass 10 have a chance to run across the German mine fields to escape. The revolt occurred in the late afternoon of October 14, 1943. The fighters killed eleven German guards, several Ukrainian guards, and the camp commander. By the end of the revolt about 300 prisoners had escaped and about 200 of them managed to avoid recapture but only a small number survived to the war's end. Pechersky joined a partisan unit in the forest and survived the war; he later wrote a memoir about the revolt. In the end of 1943, just after the uprising, Germans and locals plowed the death camp and planted crops to cover the evidence. An elaborate underground network of Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners was in place at Auschwitz-Birkenau. By summer 1944, Soviet forces were quickly advancing from the east, and the Allies from the west. Most of the non-Jewish underground backed out of the revolt but members of the Jewish Sonderkommando, went ahead with the plan knowing the Germans would kill the remaining prisoners soon. On October 7, 1944, with help from some Soviet prisoners of war, a group of prisoners blew up one of Birkenau's four crematoria using dynamite the underground had smuggled from a nearby ammunitions factory. 600 prisoners escaped after the explosion, but all were either captured or killed shortly after they fled. On January 6, 1945, less than three weeks before the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz, four young women accused of supplying the dynamite, Roza Robota, Ella Gaertner, Esther Wajcblum, and Regina Safirsztain, were hanged in the presence of the remaining inmates. The Nazis had murdered more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of others at Auschwitz ("Resistance During the Holocaust."). According to the Jewish Virtual Library, there were courageous armed uprisings but resistance also took forms without weapons which was actually more common. Attempting to live a normal Jewish life during the horrible times of the Holocaust was resistance. In the ghettos, Artists and poets entertained others, and many of their works survive today. These

Grass 11 works remind us of the horrifying mistreatment of Jews at that time. Underground newspapers were printed and distributed but those who participated were in great risk. Praying and holding religious assemblies was against resistance in the eyes of the Nazis, but synagogue services occurred regularly. Ghettos set up underground schools but the education of Jewish children was forbidden even though this was extremely important to the Jewish people. Observing Jewish rituals, including dietary laws, was severely punished by the Nazis, and many Jews took great risks to resist the Nazis who stood against these activities. Committees were created to meet the religious, educational, and cultural community needs and many of them defied Nazi authority. The writings and oral histories of survivors of the concentration camps are important to them so the world today can know what happened (Jewish Resistance to the Nazi Genocide) Outside the ghetto another form of resistance took place as some Jews escaped death by hiding in the attics, cellars, and closets of non-Jews. These non-Jews aiding Jews were committing a form of resistance as well which was punishable by death. Spiritual resistance is what kept the hope in Jews alive which could be the reason so many survived: (Grobman, Gary M.). To smuggle a loaf of bread was to resist. To teach in secret was to resist. To cry our warning and shattering was to resist. To rescue a Torah Scroll was to resist. To forge documents was to resist. To smuggle people across boarders was to resist. To chronicle events and conceal the records was to resist. To hold out a helping hand to the needy was to resist-Chaim Guri and Monia Avrahami (qtd. in Fighting for Dignity: Jewish Resistance in Krakow). Thats the only thing I had, only my faith. Once you lose that you have nothing. -David Abrams (Holocaust Survivor David Abrams Testimony.)

Grass 12 Wannsee Conference According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the "Wannsee Conference was known by the allies after the war because it was a private, high-level meeting that took place on January 20, 1942 at a villa on the shores of Berlin's Lake Wannsee. The Nazis organized it to discuss the "Final Solution" of the Jewish Question. The meeting was called by Reinhard Heydrich who was the head of the Reich Security Main Office, which controlled both the Nazi Security Police known as the Gestapo and the SS intelligence service. The meeting was postponed at first when fallout from the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor and a temporary worsening of the situation on the Eastern Front happened. Heydrich had invited 14 senior SS officers, Nazi Party officials, and civil servants to meet originally on December 9, 1941. Around the time the Wannsee meeting had originally been scheduled to take place, Hans Frank who was the governor general of German-occupied Poland had suggested to discuss the Jewish question taking place in Berlin. Furthermore, during March of 1947 the only remaining copy of the minutes of the meeting was found among German Foreign Office files by American War Crimes investigators. After that discovery, the minutes, or "Wannsee Protocol," immediately gained postwar notoriety. Historians have found it hard to reach agreement over the Wannsee Conference's function and significance because the
Location of the Wannsee Conference http://bit.ly/bBwj2D

minutes were not written verbatim. The discovery of the

listing of all European Jews scheduled for "solution," led many historians to believe it was at the Wannsee Conference that genocide had been decided upon. The only problem with this was the fact that mass killings of Jews began in the Soviet Union six months before the meeting. Belzec

Grass 13 camp was well underway and the Chelmno death camp was murdering at full force. Moreover, there was the question of who had the power to make such decisions in Nazi Germany. Neither Heydrich nor his guests were in a position to unleash the Final Solution. Historians tend to believe those decisions lay with Hitler and HimmlerIt is certainly the case that both the deportation of German Jews, and the killing rate of Polish Jews rapidly accelerated in the spring, though how far this had been facilitated by the meeting itself is unclear (Wannsee Conference)( The Minutes of the Wannsee Conference). The death camps According to University of South Florida, a total of six extermination camps were constructed in Poland including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec , Sobibr, Lublin, and Chelmno . They were called death factories and the primary purpose was the methodical killing of millions of innocent people. The first death camp was Chelmno which began operating in late 1941. The other camps started their operations in 1942. The death camps became a better, faster, less personal method for killing Jews after the use of Einsatzgruppen which was a special group in the Nazi army that hunted and killed Jews. This new method of killing Jews was one that would spare the shooters of emotional anguish leaving the victims with even more fear. September 1941, before the completion of the first death camp, Chelmno, the Nazis began using gassing vans loaded with groups of Jews who were locked in and suffocated by carbon monoxide. There was no selection process because they were killed upon arrival. The most common method at these deaths camps was to lead the Jews into a shower room and spraying chemicals on them or the use of crematoriums to burn them. Total Jews killed was between 5.2 and 5.8 million which included the 2.7 million Jews in the death

Sonderkommando burning bodies at Auschwitz Source: http://bit.ly/RV8IfS

Grass 14 camps. The total Jewish deaths were roughly half of Europe's Jewish population, the highest percentage of loss of any people in the war opposed to another 5 million of other victims that perished due to Nazi Germany. By the end of 1943 the Germans closed down the death camps built specifically to exterminate Jews. The death tolls for the camps are as follows: Treblinka, (750,000 Jews); Belzec, (550,000 Jews); Sobibr, (200,000 Jews); Chelmno, (150,000 Jews) and Lublin (50,000 Jews). Auschwitz continued to operate through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews. Allied encirclement of Germany was nearly complete in the fall of 1944. The Nazis began dismantling the camps, hoping to cover up their crimes. By the late winter/early spring of 1945, they sent prisoners walking to camps in central Germany. Thousands died in what became known as death marches (Holocaust Timeline: The Camps). Liberation According to University of South Florida, before the war ended, thousands followed their conscience in saving Jews. In Denmark, 7,220 of its 8,000 Jews were saved by citizens who hid them and ferried them to neutral Sweden where theyd be safe. Famous rescuers of Jews include Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who led an effort that saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. Oscar Schindler saved over 1,000 Polish Jews from their deaths by making a list of the ones he wanted under his command. Huguenot Pastor Andre Trocme led a rescue effort in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, which hid and protected 5,000 Jews. Over 13,000 men and women who risked their lives to rescue Jews have been honored as Righteous Gentiles at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Thousands more remain unrecognized (Holocaust Timeline: Rescue & Liberation).

Grass 15 Allied troops finally entered Nazi-occupied territories, the final rescue and liberation emerged. Allied troops who came across the camps were shocked at what they saw, anywhere from large ditches filled with bodies, rooms of baby shoes, and gas chambers with fingernail marks on the walls. General Eisenhower insisted on photographing and documenting the horror as evidence to put Nazi leaders on trial and so that future generations would not ignore history and repeat its mistakes. He also ordered allies to force villagers neighboring the death and concentration camps to view and clean up what had occurred in their own backyards. The soviets were a little more brutal in their method of liberating Germany. After soviets liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on January 27, 1945, they grew even more hatred for the Nazis and the Germans in support (Holocaust Timeline: Rescue & Liberation). The Soviets reached Berlin in April of 1945 while the U.S. cut off the Nazis chance to retreat. In the process of going through Germany, soviets were known for raping German
Soviets outside the Reichstag after the fall of Berlin villages andhttp://bit.ly/XSylkr towns by raping women, women, stealing goods, and executing on the spot.

Although the Germans probably deserved this treatment, the way they went about liberating Germany was a sign of the future. These events led up to a dispute known as the Cold War which was a difference of moral and political views between the United States and the Soviet Union. In conclusion, the Holocaust will forever leave a mark on history. Only we can learn from the past to make the future better. Although genocide in Western Europe has ended, mass murdering still takes place in Eastern Europe, across South Asia, and Africa. If only the end of WWII would have come sooner and the outcome better, many lives would have been saved but it

Grass 16 is still not too late as many governments around the world are still carrying out the same crimes the Nazis committed.

Works Cited Fighting for Dignity: Jewish Resistance in Krakow. Galacia Jewish Museum. Web. 13 Nov. 2012 Grobman, Gary M. "Jewish Resistance to the Nazi Genocide." The Holocaust-A Guide for Teachers. N.p.: n.p., 1990. N. pag. Jewish Resistance to the Nazi Genocide. AmericanIsraeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. Holocaust History. Armed Jewish Resistance: Partisans. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 11 May 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. "Holocaust History." Bialystok. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 11 May 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. "Holocaust History." Jewish Resistance. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 11 May 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. Holocaust Survivor David Abrams Testimony. [video] USCShoahFoundation. 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. "Holocaust Timeline: Rescue & Liberation." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 2005. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.

Grass 17 "Holocaust Timeline: The Camps." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 2005. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. "Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 2005. Web. 20 Apr. 2013. "Holocaust Timeline: The Nazification of Germany." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 2005. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. Holocaust Timeline: The Rise of the Nazi Party. A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 2005. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. "Jewish Resistance to the Nazi Genocide." Jewish Virtual Library. The Gale Group, 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. "Jewish Resistance." ThinkQuest. Oracle Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. Probst, Christopher J. "The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies." Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. "Resistance During the Holocaust." Resistance During the Holocaust. N.p., 2005. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. "The Ghettos: Daily Life in the Ghettos." Holocaust History. Yad Vashem, 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2013. The Minutes of the Wannsee Conference." Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. United States National Archives, 2007. Web. 23 Apr. 2013.

"Wannsee Conference." Jewish Virtual Library. The Gale Group, 2008. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.